1AC – Policy VersionPlan: The United States federal government should substantially increase its investment in a national alternative energy powered high-speed rail network. Contention 1: InherencyHigh Speed Rail funding is blocked – transportation sq funding only goes to maintaining current infrastructureGoozner, Award-winning journalist. Has been published by the New York Times, The Washington Post, etc. , June 24, 2012( Merrill, House Puts the Brakes on High Speed Rail, June 24, 2012, http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/06/24/House-Puts-the-Brakes-on-High-Speed-Rail.aspx#page1, June 25, 2012) pg. 1(House Republicans, however, are blocking all new grants arguing that repairing current systems is the priority.“Funding should go to existing infrastructure needs rather than unrealistic new high-speed rail lines to nowhere,” theappropriations committee report accompanying the legislation said.The program, now funded by regularappropriations, was axed from the Transportation Department funding bill last week, drawing a veto threat from thepresident.The effort to cage the TIGER grants is only the latest effort by House conservatives to slow down oreliminate funding for mass transit, freight rail and high-speed rail projects, which they see as a waste of money on“trains to nowhere.” Last February, the initial House reauthorization of the surface transportation trust fund, whichallocates the gasoline tax, eliminated the 20 percent set-aside for rail projects that was established by PresidentRonald Reagan in 1982. Only a revolt by Republican legislators from the suburbs outside New York City,Philadelphia and Chicago forced House Transportation Committee chairman John Mica, R-Fla., to withdraw the bill.Now, with a June 30thdeadline looming, the summer road construction season could grind to a halt if Congressdoesn’t at least extend the current law. A conference committee led by Mica and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Cal., must wrestle with a set of extraneous provisions attached to the two-year, $109 billion extension pushed by the House. They range from approving the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to giving utilities more flexibility in how they dump coal ash.)Contention 2: CompetitivenessCurrent transportation investment goes to maintaining the current highway system. This focus kills US economic competitiveness BAFEd Fund, bipartisan coalition of elected officials focused on US investment in infrastructure, 2011[Building America’s Future Educational Fund, “Building America’s Future – Falling Apart and Falling Behind,” Transportation Infrastructure Report] SMIn stark contrast to ourmost agile and aggressive foreign competitors, the U.S. stands increasingly alone in our failure toreorient our transportation spendingaccording to a new forward-looking visionthat could build atransportation network fit for a 21st-century economy. Without asimilarly strategic plan of attack to create a state-of-the-arttransportation network, the U.S. will be left far behind. This striking lack of vision is a debilitating problem. Instead of taking a

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